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The Greenfelt F.A.Q.

Frequently Asked Questions

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No, you can play all you want without logging in.
High scores are associated with login names,
so you do need to login in to get one.

If I login after starting a game, can I still get high score for it?

Yes! We forget to login sometimes too, so we made it so
you can login while you're playing or even after
playing a few games and still get credit for them.
However, if you reload the page or choose a different
game then those games will be lost, so be careful.

Do I need to enable cookies?

You need them enabled to login and get high scores. If
you wish to play anonymously then you do not need cookies
enabled.

What's with the "Game #" in the high score tables and on certain game pages?

The game number represents a single repeatable game. For
the card games, the deck will be in a particular order
for each game number after being shuffled. For Sirtet,
it means that if you play the same game number again you
will get the exact same pieces in the same order. This
lets you compete against other players on equal ground.

Solitaire Games

Why is my high score not showing on the leader board?

Only your first winning play of a particular
shuffle will show up on the leader board.

Why are the cards moving slower than usual?

This is likely because you have zoomed your
browser. Press Control-0, that is hold Control and press
Zero. If you are using Internet Explorer then you can
tell you have zoomed, by looking for a number besides
100% in the bottom right corner of your window.

Why isn't my score displayed after each game?

Your score will be displayed and highlighted in the list
of 10ish scores that pops up after you win or
click "Give Up". However, if you click "New
Game" without clicking "Give Up" we assume you
are impatient and/or are looking for a better deal and
will skip showing you your score.

Why do I keep getting a high score and yet I'm always the only one in the list?

The high score table on card games only shows the high scores for
that particular game number. Since there are a whole lot of
games (4 billion, give or take) the odds of someone else playing
the particular game you just played are very, very low. If you want
to compete with people the best thing to do is go to the Leader Board and play the various "Games of
the day".

We eventually want to replace the per game high scores with a
global player ranking. But we haven't exactly figured out what we
should be ranking players on, so it's not done yet. If you have any opinions,
let us know
on the forum.

Why don't you rank all the games ever played and show the best in the high score table?

Actually, we used to do this. Because of the way we score, the
table ends up with a whole lot of games with a score of 52 (for
Klondike, Sea Haven Towers, Freecell, etc.) These then get ranked
by time (shortest first), which just ends up encouraging people to
find an easy game and play it as fast as they can.

One solution for that might be to give harder games a higher
possible score, but how to figure out which games were "harder"
automatically is currently non-obvious to us.

Is there a key for undo?

Yes, the usual key on your platform should work: Control-z on Windows
and Unix and Command-z on Mac OS X.
Also, you can add the shift key into the sequence to get redo.

Isn't undo cheating?

Maybe, but we don't care since it makes playing so much more fun. On some
games you can undo all the way back into the previous game!

Is there a key for auto-finish?

Yes. Control-a on unix and Windows and Command-a on Mac OS X.

Isn't auto-finish cheating?

Not really. It only makes the most obvious moves.

What happens when I click a card?

When you click a card the game will make the
best simple move it can.

Why are the cards some odd colors?

It's likely a holiday and the cards have been festively
colored in that holiday's theme. Due to popular demand,
there is now a button to get the standard colors back.

So I hear there are secret games that don't show up in the menu. Is this
true? Why do you hide them? How can I play them?

Yes, that is true. We read through a lot of Solitaire rule books looking for
neat games to put on the site. Sometimes we find a game that sounds promising
and so we write it, but after playing it we feel it's either too similar to
other games or just not that fun. If you want to try them, here's a list:

Note: since these games aren't our top priority, they may not work
correctly. We're still interested in bug reports, though.

How are Scorpion, Maze, Gaps, and Addiction scored?

The score is based on the lengths of the runs of cards of the same suit. Here's a table that explains it:

Number of cards in a run

Resulting score

13

13

12

11

11

9

10

7

9

6

8

5

7

4

6

3

5

2

4

1

3

0

2

0

1

0

The max is 13 so that a complete game's score is 52, like the foundation based games. It's not
linear so that it rewards games with longer runs. We didn't want someone with a run of 6 and a run
of 7 to score the same as someone with a run of 13 (since the 13 was probably harder to achieve).

Sirtet

What's with the name Sirtet?

It's Tetris backward. The Tetris name is trademarked,
so when we wrote our first version of Tetris while we
were learning C back in '91 we called it Sirtet. This
version shares the game scoring system as well as the
block look and code (ported to javascript of course) as
our original version was only available for Amiga
and Mac OS.

I can't seem to beat Katie. Is she cheating?

Not as far as we know. She used to play our original
Mac version a lot while she was growing up, so she has
the look and feel of Sirtet seared into her brain.

Hopeless

How do I get a high score in hopeless?

Play level three. The scoring is a bit biased toward
that level. We are open to suggested scoring tweaks.
Post a message
to us in the forum if you have any ideas.